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HORACE TRAUBEL 



"I do not stop at the germ — I go on to 
the flower and fruit: 

I do not stop at the impluse to sing: I go 
on to the song : I sing : 

Whether I say old things or new things 
does not seem to matter, 

But whether I say true things does matter a 
good deal and all." 




PHOTOGRAPH BY ALLEN DREW COOK 



HORACE TRAUBEL 



MILDRED BAIN 



NEW YORK 
ALBERT AND CHARLES BONI 

96 FIFTH AVENUE 
i9'3 



Copyright 191 3, by 
Albert and Charles Boni 





CONTENTS: 




Chapter 




Page 


i. 


Traubel and Whitman - 


7 


ii. 


Data - 


1 1 


in. 


Personal pros and cons 


14 


IV. 


Backgrounds 


20 


v. 


As ARTIST - 


24 


VI. 


As POET - 


27 


VII. 


As TECHNICIAN 


34 


VIII. 


As REVOLUTIONIST 


47 


IX. 


As PROPHET - 


59 



HORACE TRAUBEL 
I 

Traubel and Whitman 

The first time I went to one of the Walt Whitman 
Fellowship Meetings, held in New York each May, 
it was with the outstanding thought in my mind that 
at last I was to come face to face with the man whose 
writings had done more for me even than Walt 
Whitman's. I was to see and know Horace Traubel. 

A thing which I find particularly interesting about 
these informal meetings is their concrete evidence of 
the universality of Whitman's appeal. It is fine to 
see how various are the tastes and intellectual 
leanings of the crowd gathered to celebrate old 
Walt's birthday. Socialists, anarchists, communists, 
painters, poets, mechanics, laborers, business men, 
people of every shade of thought and from every 
avenue of life, are there, drawn together by the 
magnetism of a common love. 

In the throng of men and women seated round 
the dinner table that night were many well-known 
people. Yet the man who spoke the least and last 
of all, the man who year after year has made these 
meetings possible, was the one about whom my 

7 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

thoughts were busiest. In the course of a few 
simple, unpremeditated remarks, Horace Traubel 
gave, as it seemed to me, the keynote to his own and 
to Whitman's philosophy. He said: "I've been 
wondering how it would be if sometime we'd come 
here and celebrate ourselves for a change and not 
even mention Walt's name !" That appeared to me 
to go to the root — to be the biggest sort of tribute 
to Whitman. It also helped me to understand some- 
thing over which I had been puzzling. Could it be 
possible that the majority of these people who were 
readers and lovers of Whitman did not realize the 
full significance of Horace Traubel? They knew 
him, to be sure, as the intimate friend and biographer 
of his famous predecessor. They loved him as a 
man. But in his own capacity as poet, philosopher, 
prophet, I felt then and still feel that only a few 
there really understood the size of the man who 
quietly and devotedly arranges these simple annual 
commemorations. And what is true of this gather- 
ing is true of America and of the world at large. 
Horace Traubel has not yet come into his own. He 
stands very close to Walt Whitman, and that juxta- 
position has misled some people — but not all. I 
myself first became aware of him through this re- 
markable partnership. The story of their friend- 
ship is immortally beautiful. Starting at the time 
when Traubel, as a youngster, used to stroll along 
beside the old man through Philadelphia and Camden 
streets, it continued until the latter's death in 1892. 

8 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

In his last years, when Whitman became completely 
invalided, Traubel served him in countless ways, with 
untiring devotion — cooperating in the publication 
of the final editions of his books, doing much of his 
correspondence and looking after his personal com- 
fort. The old man often lovingly said : "Horace, 
you anticipate my every need." It was natural 
after this for Whitman to appoint Traubel one of his 
literary executors. To this relationship we are in- 
debted for perhaps the most monumental, unique, 
and, as one critic has said, the most truthful biog- 
raphy in the English language. With Walt Whit- 
man in Camden is recognized as profoundly conclu- 
sive not only in America but by critics in England 
and on the Continent. Traubel is everywhere ac- 
knowledged even by people who otherwise ignore or 
discredit him to be unqualifiedly significant in this 
biographical capacity. It is wonderful that a young 
man of thirty should have had the judgment and 
foresight to realize the future value of those daily 
conversations, and to so record them while fresh in 
his mind that they could be published twenty years 
afterwards without alteration — and this, too, at a 
time when Whitman was the object of scorn and 
ridicule, and was far from being the world figure he 
is to-day. Traubel has been called the American 
Bos well. The first volume of With Walt Whitman 
in Camden appeared in 1906, the second in 1909. 
Mitchell Kennerley, who has recently taken over the 
series, is about to produce the third volume. Conse- 

9 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

quent volumes will be brought out each year until 
the story, which runs up to Whitman's death, is 
completed. 

While Traubel's reputation as the supreme biog- 
rapher of his friend, as "the more than Plato to the 
more than Socrates," has to be respected, I, together 
with an increasing number of students, am unwilling 
that it should stand in place of a recognition of his 
personal title to be considered independently as a 
major factor in the history of his time. The purpose 
of this brochure is to point out and justify such a 
contention. 



10 



II 

Data 

Horace Traubel was born in Camden, New Jersey, 
December 19th, 1858. His father was of Jewish, 
his mother was of Christian, origin. Traubel calls 
himself a half-breed. His father was so independent 
in character and thought that when but a mere boy 
in his teens he had a quarrel with his parents over 
religion and found it necessary to leave his home in 
Germany on account of it. A year or two later he 
sailed for America, landing in Philadelphia penni- 
less and without friends. There he found work as a 
lithographer. Maurice Traubel was also a gifted 
painter, writer and musician, and for the rest of his 
life was one of the familiar figures of the Quaker 
City. He married Katherine Grunder, a Philadelphia 
girl, and seven children were born to them. Horace 
was the fifth child — a shy, pale, blue-eyed youngster, 
saying little and reading everything he could get his 
hands on. At twelve years of age he left school, and 
began to shift for himself, being in turn newsboy, 
errand boy, printers' devil, compositor, lithographer, 
newspaper man, factory pay-master, bank clerk. In 
1902 we find him a free lance, devoting himself to 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

the publication of The Conservator and to doing his 
other literary work. 

From 1903 to 1907, he, Will Price and Hawley 
McLanahan edited a magazine called The Artsman. 
It was the organ of the Rose Valley Movement, a 
crafts experiment which proved unsuccessful. 
Traubel contributed short monographs on the prac- 
tical arts and idealism. In 1891 he married Anne 
Montgomerie. Two children came of the union — 
Gertrude, now twenty years old, and Wallace, who 
died at the age of five years. They make their home 
in Camden, living in a very modest, simple way. 
Traubel has his office in Philadelphia. His Chants 
Communal was published by Small, Maynard and 
Company, Boston, in 1905. And a noble translation 
by O. E.Lessing appeared in Germany from the house 
of R. Piper & Company, Munchen, in 1907. 
Optimos, which appeared in 19 10, bore the imprint 
of B. W. Huebsch. The Conservator was started 
in 1890 and has been maintained up to the present 
through years of fierce struggle against financial 
adversity. 

In the early days Traubel wrote many rhymed 
poems which were printed in papers and magazines. 
For three or four years in the eighties he did most 
of the editorial writings of the Boston Common- 
wealth, besides contributing miscellaneous literary 
stuff to the paper and acting as its Philadelphia 
correspondent. He was also for several years on the 
editorial staff of Unity, Chicago, the Western organ 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

of liberal Unitarianism. He was the founder of the 
Contemporary Club in Philadelphia and one of the 
founders of Philadelphia's Ethical Society. 

Traubel has been translated generously into the 
French and German. Two of the Optimos poems, 
for instance, have recently been put into German by 
Johannes Schlaf. The February issue of 1913 of 
Die Lese, Stuttgart, was dedicated to Traubel, and 
almost wholly given over to a presentation and appre- 
ciation of his work. Lessing's splendid tribute and 
Arthur Holitscher's estimate appear, and these, with 
three of the chants themselves, will no doubt greatly 
widen the circles of Traubel lovers in Germany. 
Several recent things from The Conservator have 
been done into French by Leon Bazalgette, the trans- 
lator and biographer of Whitman. So his work is 
slowly becoming better known both here and abroad. 



Ill 

Personal pros and cons 

If you were to meet Horace Traubel without 
knowing who he was you would instantly feel your- 
self to be in the presence of an unusual and power- 
ful personality. 

His appearance alone would tell you that. The 
short figure, the full throat, the noble, splendidly 
shaped head, the intensely alive mobile face with its 
large, eager, blue eyes, and lips determined and im- 
petuous under the short moustache, the crowning 
glory of thick, loosely tossed white hair, all go to 
make up an individuality which is at once that of a 
radiant boy and of a supreme seer. He is always 
dressed in the simplest clothes. He wears a soft gray 
hat which he can fold up and stick in his pocket, a 
low collar with flowing tie, and goes without a vest 
or overcoat even in the coldest weather. 

Everything about him is in keeping with his in- 
dependent, freedom-loving nature. I suppose there 
are people who can, when they are with Traubel, 
realize that he is a writer — a great mystic whose 
poems are not yet fully comprehended by his age. 
But I must confess that I cannot. He is preeminent- 

H 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

ly human. The writer, the scholar, are completely 
lost in the man. The fact of his genius seems some- 
how a minor consideration when compared with the 
magnetism of his friendship. 

You never knew anyone more sincere, direct and 
spontaneous. He is full of fun and humor, too, 
loving a joke, and is up to juvenile pranks and mis- 
chief. Joyous, lovable, sympathetic to a rare de- 
gree, it is no wonder he wins friends who cherish 
his good will above all things. 

What impresses you most about his personality as 
you get to know him is his intense and vital passion 
for humanity. To be where people are, to share the 
joys and sorrows of the e very-day man, to offer him- 
self wherever there is human need — that you grow 
to learn is the dominant motive of his life. He gives 
the benefit of his wide experience and deep under- 
standing to anyone who may draw on it. 

It is interesting to observe that there is not the 
slightest hint of the professional writer about him. 
He does not use bookish words in talking. He does 
not refer to things he has read and you have not 
(though his reading has always been tremendous in 
its range). He does not quote his own poems. He 
is "a mere man among mere people," as he himself 
says. One of his chief delights is walking. He is 
untiring. He tells me of a Sunday tramp with some 
friends from Philadelphia to Bethelehem, "well on 
to sixty miles." 

At night, often late into the night, he loafs about 
15 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

the streets. He prefers the simple things, the simple 
restaurants, the simple hotels, the simple people. He 
drinks buttermilk where other men drink whiskey. 
He never smokes. He swears. He says of himself : 
"I'm often hot in the collar when there's no use for 
it at all." A natural person always finds his way to 
Traubel's heart. 

His capacity for friendship and comradeship is 
one of the most remarkable things about this remark- 
able man. He has an enormous correspondence, 
which he attends to personally, doing every bit of his 
writing by hand. Wherever he happens to be, 
whether in his office in Philadelphia, where he edits 
his monthly paper, The Conservator, or away from 
home, his letters form an important and never 
neglected part of the day's work — letters to people 
old and young, near and remote, all loved by him; 
letters bearing words of cheer; messages of love and 
encouragement such as only a great nature can dic- 
tate. 

Children come in for a large share of his affection 
and time. Picture postals, little things found in the 
stores which will delight a child's heart, go to them ; 
improvised verses, letters to sick youngsters — in 
these sweet, quiet ways he enters into the common 
life. 

Somewhere in one of his poems he has said: 
"I have no gospel to preach: I just walk around 
and let my spirit loose in the crowd." And this is 
true. The people who expect or wish to hear 

16 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

Traubel talk about religion or philosophy are dis- 
appointed. That is not his way. He does not waste 
time arguing about God. Yet something far subtler 
which radiates from him inspires and uplifts those 
who come within his influence. 

He has the widest tastes. He is a baseball fan. 
He likes what he calls the "circus operas." He can 
talk with you intimately about football and prize- 
fighting. Yet he is an insatiable lover of music. He 
never misses a symphony concert if he can help it. He 
is especially fond of the theater, many actors both 
famous and obscure being among his warm personal 
friends. 

Traubel has little or no use for exceptions, for 
shining lights, for people who in any way think 
themselves different from or superior to the crowd. 
Wherever he is, whatever he is doing, he is himself — 
the immediate, nonchalant, freedom-loving man 
moved by spontaneous impulses. He has almost a 
horror of artificiality, of dressed-up superior things 
or people. In formal conventional gatherings he is 
naturally not at home. I have seen him sit through 
an evening of this sort without saying a word, which 
is certainly an unusual thing for him, for he is a 
prodigious talker when with congenial people or 
when aroused by some subject of interest. He can 
be and is fluent, vivid and stimulating to an un- 
common degree. 

In talking, as in everything else, with him the free 
play of the spirit is the thing. If he feels like talk- 

17 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

ing he talks. He refuses to be dragged fnto conver- 
sation or controversy. He is not always, though 
mostly, considerate of other people's feelings; but 
sometimes his intense and outspoken convictions and 
his incisive satire and wit are received as if some 
personal affront was intended. He is misunderstood, 
as such a nature is bound to be. His frankness is 
sometimes taken for defiance and his truthfulness 
for brutality. He is impatient, restless and often 
irritable. That energy which has lavished itself in 
such a tremendous flood of writing chafes under re- 
straint. When he encounters some kinds of things 
in people he manifests an irritation which, while it 
looks ugly, is still only superficial. He is almost 
brutally aggressive in his attitude toward praise or 
blame. He says to me : "I don't care a damn either 
way." He probably means that to be taken esoter- 
ically. For he also says : "I don't write a word to 
please anybody else, but I am pleased when some- 
body else is pleased." 

Traubel says to me with regard to his poverty: 
"It is up to me to take my medicine. I have no right 
to do unpopular things and expect the popular re- 
turns. If I want the prizes I should do the things 
for which the prizes are awarded." And he lives this 
theory out. He never complains or growls. He puts 
up no claim for himself by which to measure the 
world's gratitude. He says again: "The world 
don't want me; I understand that quite well. It 
don't want the thing I offer it. I don't give in to 

18 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

the world. I have already given in to myself. The 
world don't want me, but I want myself." 

He does his work, happy in doing it, his one great 
hope being that he may have contributed something 
toward civilizing the human heart. To have the 
world sometime grasp his message, to feel himself 
understood, is the only pay such a man as he wants 
or would accept. In the face of such indifference, 
such ridicule, such misunderstanding, as would have 
broken the resolution of a lesser man, he has gone 
his way uttering sublime words of cheer and en- 
couragement, and exhibiting an invariable and com- 
plete faith. 



l 9 



IV 

Backgrounds 

Let us first study the outspread vista and so 
get a clear background against which to place this 
novel figure in literature. 

The old saying that time works wonders is indeed 
trite, yet in no case is it to be more pertinently re- 
peated than in judging a seer or prophet and his re- 
lation to his own country, period and ultimate world- 
place. In America, for instance, at the present day, 
the financial or political genius is the man who is 
most widely admired and welcomed. It is true we 
have our art world where original and splendid work 
is being done, but most of our critics spend their 
time almost exclusively lauding the work of the 
alien. "Distant pastures are always green." To 
some, the bare thought that artistic creation is 
achieved in this new world of skyscrapers and com- 
mercialism is absurd, if not entirely out of the ques- 
tion. But before he can appreciate a beautiful 
thing, there must be beauty in the eye of the be- 
holder. And if, as it may happen, this beautiful 
thing be also strange, a departure from the accus- 
tomed standards, then an even more heroic attitude 
of soul is required for its apprehension. 

The growth of the democratic spirit has affected 
20 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

life at many obvious points. We sometimes fail to 
realize the more subtle, more important, phenomena 
of this evolution. We see plainly enough how the 
democratic ideal, worked out in governments, is 
slowly but surely superseding the monarchial ideal. 
We see that the people in mass the whole world over 
are becoming roused to the sense of their communal 
power and responsibility. We see that traditional 
religious forms are being discarded and abandoned, 
not to the detriment of true worship, but for its 
sake. We see that laws and customs are undergoing 
a fierce fusillade of challenges and questions. We 
see that the economic and sex formulas, constituting 
the innermost stronghold of existing institutions, are 
being assailed by modernists who, having arrived at 
a higher conception of morality, refuse to be satis- 
fied with any temporizing conclusions. The world 
is experiencing on every side a tremendous revolt. 
This unusual situation is revealed to us like a fresh 
landscape in which the immemorial elements of na- 
ture are assuming adventurous groupings and com- 
binations. 

Every student must acknowledge the presence of 
these vast transforming facts. It is imperative for 
him to recognize the part played by the poets, artists, 
philosophers — by all the avatars of the new spirit — 
who are to-day crystallizing in their work the ideals 
of the changing order. In every age interpreters and 
seers have served the world as revealers of life and 
its meanings. These men have never been under- 

21 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

stood or appreciated by their contemporaries. How 
could they be? The very fact that they see farther 
and voyage ahead of the rest, dooms them to lone- 
liness and isolation. They are the pathfinders, the 
pioneers, the announcers and discoverers. And just 
in proportion as their journey into the invisible has 
been long or short will their popular recognition be 
delayed or imminent. Bergson has been recently 
heralded abroad and here in America as the expo- 
nent of a new philosophy. It is claimed for him that 
his point of view is revolutionary. Balfour wrote 
about him, whereupon he became the "fashionable 
philosopher" in England. I have referred to the 
noteworthy fact that we hastily acclaim such men 
when they are sighted abroad. How often it occurs 
that they suddenly appear, flash briefly across the 
intellectual sky, are eagerly greeted by the world, 
and then as suddenly vanish. 

They lack the fundamentals. On the other hand, 
there are men who are like fixed stars in the immen- 
sity and permanency of their meanings. These are 
the slow arrivals. They stand still, are poised, re- 
volve in their own cosmic orbit, until after often 
tragic postponements, they come into the focus of 
the world's understanding. They unceasingly labor, 
they unremittingly create, but for the time being 
they are unseen and unknown. Finally the time is 
ripe, and they are disclosed as the utterers of truths 
towards which the world has all the while been slow- 
ly advancing. 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

In Horace Traubel, America has given to scripture 
and literature one of the forerunners. We are 
coming to see that in him we possess a great prophet 
of an illuminated, spiritualized social order. The 
spectacle of a man of genius who, for over twenty 
years, under discouraging auspices, has produced 
writings extraordinary in volume and quality, is 
perhaps not in itself unprecedentedly marvellous, 
but that he should have continued his fight steadily, 
almost without recognition, with a very limited 
audience, suggests that something very much out of 
the common must have been his motive and impulse. 



2 3 



As artist 

I would like to emphasize the fact that Traubel's 
writings, belonging as they do to the new spirit, must 
be weighed and considered in the terms of the new 
spirit. They cannot be measured by the old stand- 
ards — the accepted canons of art no more fit the 
writings of such creative men than the ideals and 
theories of the feudal system fit into the dreams of 
the Social Commonwealth. We must approach the 
writings of men like Traubel, Carpenter and 
Whitman with the truth clear in our minds that it 
is impossible for a free spirit to confine itself in 
formal and arbitrary metres. William Blake has 
well said: "Poetry fettered, fetters the human 
race." Freedom inevitably shows itself in form as 
well as spirit. Our language is, at best, a limited 
vehicle for profound and passionate utterance. How 
much more so, when poetry restricts itself to rhyme! 
Can we conceive of the theories and subject matter 
of poets like Shakespeare, Scott and Tennyson, for 
instance, who embody the principles of feudalism, of 
caste, of lords and ladies and aristocratic institutions, 
as appropriate to the ideals of the new order of 

24 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

things? These ideals are immense and all-inclusive. 
Justice, love, the industrial struggle, liberty, the 
equality of the sexes, comradeship, are some of the 
themes which engage the modern poet in contrast to 
silks and perfumes and wars and ladies' eye-brows 
which were mostly the themes of the past. Do not 
understand me as attempting to belittle or under- 
value the work of the old poets. They expressed 
their age in an unsurpassed fashion. This is a world 
of cause and effect. They were effects, the natural 
outcome of the time in which they lived, just as are 
the modern poets of revolt. To poets of the old 
order, the mass of the people, their hopes and aspira- 
tions, were non-existent. All heroes were inevitably 
of the aristocracy. Take Tennyson as an illustra- 
tion. His poetry breathes the idleness, the tradi- 
tions, the stately mannerisms, of old England's 
upper classes, all beautifully done, but with never a 
word of democracy. Most people to-day accept the 
old standards of art as final. Is this always to be? 
Are we always to be fed on ideals which we know 
have been superseded by larger ideals? Decidedly 
not. A new world has been born. New demands, 
new needs for expression of the individual and social 
life, have come into being. When once the con- 
sciousness of this enters and takes possession of us, 
we infallibly realize that a different standard of 
literature, and indeed of all the arts, must accom- 
pany the change. The psychology of this fact is be- 
coming more and more apparent. Wagner outraged 

25 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

tradition. So did Rodin. So did Whitman. And 
so does Traubel. But because we are unable to 
classify these first-hand men, because we find it im- 
possible to line them up with anything in the past, 
are we to deny their undoubted mastership and con- 
tribution to the enlargement of life ? It seems to me 
that the great and central idea of modern art is its 
unique recognition of the divinity of all life. A 
cosmic spirit pervades the work of the big new poets. 
Acceptance and toleration, faith and cheer, are its 
prerequisites. Its verbalism and technique are 
simple. It uses the speech of every day, of the 
crowd. Strivings for effect, artificialities of any 
sort, are invariably absent. I hope I have said 
enough to prove the connection between the new 
spirit and the new forms which it naturally creates 
for itself. And I have tried to indicate some of the 
revolutionary characteristics to be looked for. 
Traubel's work embodies these ideals to an extraor- 
dinary degree. 



26 



VI 

As poet 

Most of the enemies of Optimos have agreed at 
least upon one thing — that it is an imitation of 
Leaves of Grass. Besides being superficial and 
puerile, this contention proves conclusively to me that 
such critics are quite as much in the dark about 
Whitman as about Traubel. 

When Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy 
was published the same charge was made. Walt 
Whitman was known to have been a tremendous in- 
fluence in Carpenter's life, just as he was in 
Traubel's. So, when the book made its appearance, 
many of the reviewers put it down as a slavish imi- 
tation. Written in the free unrhymed style made 
famous by Leaves of Grass — singing, too, of love 
and liberty — how was it possible, they said, that 
Towards Democracy could be anything but a dis- 
ciple's echo of his master ? Now Optimos comes for- 
ward to meet with the same sort of dissent. I my- 
self take the opposite stand — that is, with those who 
feel in it a personality distinct from any with which 
they have hitherto come in contact. I certainly think 
that the latter perceive both Leaves of Grass and 

27 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

Optimos more profoundly than they who do not 
realize the differences as well as the likenesses be- 
tween the two books. Walt Whitman was not 
Traubel's origin, but influenced him, coloring and 
permeating Optimos like the sunshine filtering 
through the trees. He has been, and is, a root 
nourishment as impalpably strong as natural ele- 
ments. But the brave, strange new book Optimos 
has a selfhood and individuality which cannot, to the 
intuitive, be confounded with that of any other. 
Whitman admits that he was powerfully affected by 
Ossian, the Bhagavad Gita and Emerson. In the 
same way Traubel and Carpenter were later affected 
by Leaves of Grass. All people draw to themselves 
the things which belong to them. 

Optimos has followed Leaves of Grass so closely 
in point of time that this confusion has naturally 
resulted. In estimating a new message, certain fun- 
damental truths must be borne in mind — that in- 
finite variety is everywhere found within similar 
forms, and that all great poetry is necessarily thrown 
up out of the same deep soil. For instance, we used 
to have an idea that Christianity was the only re- 
ligion. It was the one way of truth and life. All 
other beliefs were not only heathenish, but hopeless- 
ly unable to accomplish the salvation of the soul. 
Now we see that religion is humanity's universal 
possession, and that all creeds are valuable as indica- 
tions of progress towards perfection. Underlying 
the bibles of the East and of the West are the eternal 

28 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

things of the spirit which have expressed themselves 
through such wonderful and versatile forms. Oc- 
cidental and oriental religions are one in purpose yet 
richly unique in result, each contributing ideas of its 
own to the general store. 

It is a remarkable fact that wherever we have 
what we call inspired writers we observe an identity 
of style and language which is marked in the ex- 
treme. The interior spirit chooses its own medium, 
and this is the reason why men of the loftiest out- 
look revert to free archaic speech. The channels of 
inspiration must be left unobstructed. The full 
heart must have its way. So we find the prophets of 
old singing in rapt wild notes, and the prophets of 
to-day — men like Whitman, Traubel and Carpenter 
— dropping into the same free soaring vocalism. 
More or less resembling each other in general spread 
and reach, and inspired by a related faith, Leaves 
of Grass and Optimos are alike the utterance of 
elemental man. Yet their vocabulary is new, superb- 
ly fitted for the ears of the future. 

Optimos is vividly different from Leaves of Grass. 
Its characteristics are as peculiarly its own as 
Traubel's temperament is different from Whitman's. 
Walt foretold new poets, and in Traubel the world 
possesses one of them. Whitman indicated the vast 
range of the liberated spirit. He was primarily a 
philosopher, a mystic, a dreamer. He had an almost 
oriental attitude and temperament. He was big, 
slow-moving, phlegmatic. He approached things by 

2 9 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

indirection. He was cautious, serene, poised. He 
hated disputes. His treatment of some themes was 
almost impersonally abstract. Traubel, while a 
philosopher, is basically dynamic. His poems are 
singularly concrete in their foregrounds and ideal 
in their issues. They are all entangled with actual 
experience. His verbalism is the most naive, the 
most realistic, used by any poet in the English 
language to-day. Optimos is constructively simpler 
than Leaves of Grass and discloses in its author an 
even wider vocabulary. Optimos is philosophy in 
action, as it were. Like the man, it is direct, child- 
like and vital. Then it differs from Leaves of Grass 
in its practical sociology. It is the voice of the pro- 
test for justice and human rights. 

Traubel is impetuous, voluble and insistent. His 
work partakes of the fighting qualities of his nature. 
He is absorbed heart and soul in the social struggle. 
Consequently, there is a certain vehemence in the 
book which contrasts sharply with the quietism of 
Whitman. The emotional appeal differs in nature 
but not in result. Optimos is the outcry of a soul 
that lives in a world of super-consciousness. It 
says things for itself, and it says things for all. It 
is a moulding, inspiring force. It reveals the inner 
law in control of a life. Both Whitman and Traubel 
belong essentially to the new world, with its modern 
spirit, its humanism, its religion of every-day. They 
are the forerunners of poets to come — men and 
women who, being stirred by the glorious visions 

3° 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

of a perfect humanity, will translate them into the 
common language. Traubel has given definite 
form and outline to many of the vague beautiful 
dreams of men. He has amplified the ideals of love 
and comradeship which Whitman left nebulous, and 
imparted to them earth meanings, speaking with a 
personal authority which cannot be gainsaid. His 
individuality is fresh and prophetic. 

Leaves of Grass and Optimos are two streams 
from the same source. Leaves of Grass shows us 
the world at large. It is law and principle. Optimos 
shows us many of the figures in the landscape — 
people as they are actually engaged in the fight for 
life. It is law in its working clothes. This antithesis 
is not to be taken too literally, however ; for Optimos 
goes quite as high and deep as Leaves of Grass. I 
am referring rather to emphasis. Whitman concen- 
trated at one point, Traubel at another. Optimos at 
once specifies and is the impetus towards a very 
definite personalism, while all the time having as its 
background the profoundly mystic insight which 
makes such an example safe to follow. It is a voice 
right at our ear. Leaves of Grass and Optimos are 
brother autobiographies, adding, each one, distinc- 
tively, through the most intimate channels, to our 
knowledge of life and of destiny. 

You have got to read Optimos with such things 
in view. A Canadian writer says of the book : "Not 
since the appearance of Walt Whitman's Leaves of 
Grass has such a striking book come from the Amer- 

3 1 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

ican press." Traubel's Chants Communal, published 
in Boston in 1904, was promptly received in Ger- 
many as an extraordinary contribution to modern 
literature. In America it was neglected — made 
nothing of except by a few individuals. 

Is the old story to be new again? Is America 
again to be the last to recognize its own? Here 
we have a profoundly significant book; the farthest 
ideals spoken in the nearest words ; poems which are 
scriptural in spirit, yet ultra-modern in form — 
written in the language of every-day, yet one with 
eternal principles. 

Nowhere in literature is there to be found such a 
lofty demonstration of art drawn from such a simple 
vocabulary. This book is a creation, a departure. It 
is a new signal. There are many to-day, and there 
will be many more, who will welcome it as the fore- 
runner of that naturalism which must more and 
more become the medium of all art. Optimos in 
form is not made up higgledy-piggledy of poems 
about this and that strung together with plenty of 
rhyme but no reason, but is coherently constructed, 
grouped, clinched, like a perfect demonstration. 
Each of the nine clusters of songs expands and 
reveals the central themes of love and faith. 

Out of the wonderful mystic poems in which the 
spiritual preparations are intimated they broaden 
into the general life. Songs of joy, liberty, love, 
comradeship, follow each other in their natural de- 
velopment. Toward the end the loving, trusting soul 

3 2 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

bursts into tremendous paeans to labor, chanting the 
social struggle, claiming all things for the people. 

I feel that women will find a special message in 
this book. Where else have we had the free woman, 
the divinely human mother and comrade, sung in 
such magnificently comprehensive tones? In the 
group entitled, To You Going or Coming, O Wom- 
an, a mirror is held up before the face of woman in 
which she can see herself as she is and as she is 
bound to become. There are no compliments, there 
is no belittling persiflage, here — only the strong, 
virile spirit which helps and inspires woman to the 
fulfilment of herself. "None of the alabaster-brow, 
Cinderella-feet business of the poets," Traubel says, 
describing his own work. 

The book closes with a simple sustained note of 
affirmation. The last poems sum up experience, tell 
of struggle and discouragement, but proclaim that 
all despairs are but steps in the triumphant ascent 
of the spirit. Death and the grave lose their sting 
and victory in the presence of so inclusive and so 
uncompromising a challenge. 



33 



VII 

As technician 

The difference between the old and the new 
schools of art is necessarily a technical as well as a 
spiritual one. 

I recently read with much interest a column 
written by a newspaper critic devoted to an appre- 
ciation of Alfred Noyes and his poetry. I was par- 
ticularly struck with the statement that the writer 
saw in Noyes one of the new poets. It was said that 
through him the younger race is expressing that 
which is best and highest in its faith, its aspirations 
and its ideals. Then, in support of this claim there 
followed a stanza from Noyes' poem, The Voices of 
the Guns. 

I do not believe that the immense modern ideas of 
life can ever be interpreted by such voices. Or that 
a cannon ball can ever sing the new tones. No, the 
poet of the modern world must bring us the voices 
of the humanities, or he surely belongs with the 
singers of the past. We now expect from the poet 
loftier, more spiritual ideals. 

In his prophetically beautiful essay on the poet, 
Emerson says : "O poet ! a new nobility is conferred 

34 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

in groves and pastures, and not in castles or by the 
swordblade any longer." And it is true that our ears 
are attuned these days to something infinitely less 
noisy, yet infinitely more powerful, than the roar of 
guns. The cry of brotherhood is the mightiest voice 
in the world to-day. 

All the big new poets are poets of peoples, not 
poets of coronations and aristocracies and wars. 
Men like Verhaeren, Whitman, Carpenter, Traubel, 
have broken loose from the trammels, not only of old 
techniques, but of old points of view. The critics of 
the poetic revolt have an idea that the breakaway 
had simply to do with traditional poetic forms. It 
is true that the departure is also verbal. But it is 
not only or chiefly that. It is primarily and vehe- 
mently the assumption of a popular as opposed to 
an aristocratic theory of art. Now, Noyes simply 
works along old lines. He merely repeats the 
antique creed. He does nothing which adds any- 
thing unique to the already existing poetic output 
of the world. We are pressing on to a natural, nor- 
mal literature of an ascendant democracy. The old 
songs distinguished by the accepted rhymes and the 
sickening measures of past schools cannot express 
the inspiration of the modern spirit. Noyes is not 
to me even an echo. He is already an echo of echoes. 
He is going back. He is not going ahead. He is a 
repeater of dead phrases, a master of effete verbal 
customs. 

Traubel has said to me that Robert Ingersoll, in 
35 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

speaking to him of poetry just before his death, gave 
it as his opinion that there would never again be a 
poet of the first class in our language using the 
rhymed form and the professional lilts. Ingersoll 
died in 1899. His prophesy has so far proved true 
— Noyes and all others, notwithstanding. 

I have frequently opened up with Traubel the sub- 
ject of his technique. "I know what I have tried to 
do," he says, "but I can't know what I have suc- 
ceeded in doing." 

"What have you tried to do?" 

"For one thing I have tried to go the best one 
better ; I have tried to be simpler than the simplest — 
to present myself absolutely in my common vocabu- 
lary." 

"How do you mean that? Can you explain it a 
little more fully?" 

"Maybe. I'll try. I lectured on Whitman in 
Steinert Hall. A man in the audience asked me: 
'Do you claim that Emerson and Whitman had no 
imperfections?' I at once said: 'No, I don't claim 
that they were perfect. Emerson and Whitman 
made one big mistake. They seemed to think that 
a man could not be at the same time an optimist and 
a propagandist, a passive philosopher and an active 
revolutionary. I believe it possible for a man to be 
both.' " 

I asked Traubel whether his theory had any 
witnesses. He smiled. He picked up a copy of 
Optimos and tapped it with his forefinger. 

36 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

"I can't say. I have hoped this book was a wit- 
ness. It was intended to be. I may have missed the 
mark. That was the intention — to make this book a 
witness." 

Traubel added, along this line, as I questioned 
him: 

"The book belongs to democracy ; to the people ; to 
ordinary men and women; to the ideals of the street ; 
to the clamor of revolution. You will find this in 
its very verbalism — in the play of its speech. I 
don't mean by this that I may not be subtle. I only 
mean that I am not sophistical. I don't compete for 
the professional prizes. I am not interested in the 
formal rewards. I don't see why the biggest things 
may not be said in the littlest words. If you will 
read that section of Optimos, in which the woman, 
the sex, poems are grouped you will see that I go to 
woman with a new question and come from her with 
a new answer." 

"What question and what answer is that?" 

"The question and answer of a final free fertili- 
zing comradeship. Women now sit in some of the 
parliaments of the world. They sit in the parliament 
of my book. The woman is there with the man on 
equal terms without being insulted with the old 
chivalries." 

"Do you mean that you have done all this with a 
new technique ?" 

"I don't make such a large claim. I only say that 
I have tried to keep my text as genuinely immediate 

37 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

as the things it undertakes to portray. I have meant 
to show that it is possible to express the new con- 
clusions in the dialect of the people. I have not only 
given woman her place and man his place and sex 
its place and revolution its place, but have also given 
language its place. I feel that a new alphabet goes 
along with the new dreams, the new humanities." 

He has said to his friends : "Don't set me up too 
high. Claim too little rather than too much for me. 
I would rather have a few know me for what I am 
than many know me for what I am not." These 
poems are autobiographical. The man and his 
written word are one and the same thing. 

Traubel wrote a poem which he called: You 
are Going to have a Baby. A big woman greeted 
it with enthusiasm : "It is the greatest idealist poem 
in the language." Then Traubel wrote a subsequent 
poem: And now the Baby is Born. The woman 
was shocked: "There is evidently a real baby in 
the poem; it reduces my estimate somewhat." 
Traubel replied: "There is a real baby in every 
one of my poems." So there is. Every poem is 
based upon a life- fact — something very concrete. 
No matter what it leads to it has this origin. It is 
this immediateness which singles these poems out as 
forming a new, invaluable report on life — separates 
them in a way from all human literature. They are 
not merely descriptions of things in life. They are 
life itself; life as understood by a master symbolist 
and realist. 

38 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

Traubel was asked: "Where did you get that 
word Optimos?" One of his friends, way up in the 
etymologies of language, wrote him, saying that such 
a word was impossible. He, too, asked: "Where 
did you get it?" Traubel tapped his forehead : "Out 
of here." A learned admiring musician friend said 
laughing over it: "It was divine impertinence. 
How did you dare to do it ?" Traubel, too, laughed. 
He said, nonchalantly: "Oh, I don't know; if I 
don't find the word I want when I want a word I 
make it." "How can you justify such a process?" 
He answered : "By making good." He seems to be 
making good. 

Traubel said to me : "Read the poem with that title 
line Optimos. If you understand the poem you will 
never again ask the meaning of Optimos." And he 
also said : "If I can say cosmos, meaning the whole, 
why shouldn't I say optimos, meaning to speak of 
the cheerful whole ?" That's the point. The Cheer- 
ful Whole. This book, every book, all his writings, 
means "the cheerful whole" as he speaks of it. 

As I have said, Traubel's inspiration is instant, 
drawn out of his personal contact with life. He 
does not go back to books, borrowing their hoarded 
substance. He goes forward along with his environ- 
ment. 

He is drastic in his methods. He wishes to arouse, 
to inspire, to stimulate. He writes out of life seek- 
ing for more life. His tone is invariably optimistic. 
But his is not the blind optimism of one who fails 

39 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

to see the tragedies and sorrows of existence. It is 
the unshakable faith of one who, realizing the in- 
cidental shadows and the reasons for a temporal 
despair, yet sees these mysteries cleared up in the 
rounded whole. Those singular Collects, which ap- 
pear each month in The Conservator, those rhapso- 
dies of a dreamer, those clamoring melodies of a 
musician, are not evidences against but for the sanity 
of his balanced and orbic vision. It is important to 
say a word as to the technique of these Collects. 
They are subtly conceived. They are symphonic in 
form — constructed like the tone poems. The first 
movement presents the theme with extended various 
intimations, always in a major affirmative key. 
Then there is a pause. The second movement is the 
descent, telling of the temptations and distresses 
which assail the soul from a lower plane. I call this 
the minor movement. Here another pause ensues. 
Then the third and final movement occurs — lifts its 
triumphant outcry to the heights in words of mun- 
dane reassurance and cosmic affirmation. The 
Collects invariably suggest symphonic music to me. 
And it is only what could have been expected that 
Traubel's sensitiveness to color and melody, his close 
association with musicians, his delight especially in 
orchestral music (he once loved, he says he now 
hates, operas) should influence his verbalism in 
subtle ways. His iconoclasm is no accident. 

The records of intimate daily talks with Whitman 
constitute in their method of treatment an unpre- 

40 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

cedented and daring departure from all old theories 
of biography. While the principle upon which he 
has here proceeded has brought him much praise, it 
has likewise opened him to much criticism, but 
Traubel remains unperturbed. Paul Elmer More 
calls it "shirt sleeve biography." Traubel himself 
says : "I'm not interested in making Whitman good 
or bad : I'm only trying to tell the truth." And he 
has also said to me : "I don't intend to hide a man's 
evil and parade his good : I'm going to let the good 
and evil take care of themselves in the mind of the 
reader." 

He tells how one day in the St. Botolph Club in 
Boston a group of his friends were discussing with 
him the first volume, which had just appeared. One 
man said that the book would be perfect if he had 
mostly left out the references to Whitman's physical 
condition — the little daily comments on his health 
which passed between them as the young fellow en- 
tered the bedroom where the disabled poet passed his 
days and nights. Another of the group immediately 
spoke up and said he thought the book would be irre- 
trievably injured if those local touches were omitted. 
But to his taste there was too much literary discus- 
sion. He would have some of this eliminated, think- 
ing the book would thereby gain in simplicity and 
force. So it went around the circle. Everybody 
objected to something, but no two objected to the 
same thing. Traubel then said : "You confirm me 
in my original notion — the logic of my acquiescence 

4i 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

in the objections would be that there would be no 
book, for somebody objects to everything." 

This incident indicates the stern integrity with 
which he pursues his purposes. He is unyielding. 
Not because he is stubborn, but because he is reason- 
able. He has looked the problem all over and deter- 
mined its issues. He is not unwilling to change his 
course, but he cannot be driven. "Being simple, 
being natural, being myself, is better than being or- 
nate, sophisticated, somebody else," as he puts it. 

In his style, Traubel's creative gift has developed 
something absolutely individual and unique. He is 
the originator and pioneer of a new school of 
writing. He has dared to defy tradition. He has 
set up a new canon of art. His Collects and book 
reviews — in fact, all of his prose writings — are full 
of brief sentences, which often consist of a single 
word. He avoids the long, involved statement. He 
says that writing should be like speech ; as close to it 
as possible. His aim is perfect naturalness, and a 
simplicity which is almost austere. To gain this, 
he throws out all ornaments or flimflam which might 
obscure the meaning and gets right down to the al- 
phabet. His vocabulary is extraordinary in its 
range. Writers throughout the country are imita- 
ting his style. They are boldly making sentences 
without verbs. They are ejaculating in short crisp 
periods. They are having less use for the comma. 

But there is something more to Traubel's style 
than punctuation. Speaking of his writing, Traubel 

42 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

has said : "The secret of my style is not that it is 
no style. The secret of my style is that it is my 
style." His prose flows on like a rushing stream. 
The many periods are only pebbles on the river-bed. 
As the current of thought carries the reader along 
he finds himself unerringly making the pauses re- 
quired by the meaning. He begins to see that he 
has been depending a lot on commas and colons and 
semicolons. It is undoubtedly true that Traubel's 
much denounced style is no arbitrarily adopted thing, 
but is the natural adequate expression of himself. 
It has evolved from his own personality. It is his 
literary embodiment. In his poems he writes with 
free, swinging, musical lines. It would be difficult 
to imagine this man using any other mode of expres- 
sion. A free nature must utter itself freely. It must 
be a law unto itself. In the early days he wrote 
rhymed poems. A few of his friends still insist that 
they are the best things he has ever done. But how 
many there are who find their inspiration and delight 
in the full rhythms of his later free musical 
cadences. 

As I have said, the wonderfully beautiful and in- 
spiring Collects are symphonic in form. They are 
composed of three movements, musical in treatment 
and feeling. No doubt their motives, submotives, 
recurrences and climaxes would make an impressive 
tone-effect if it were possible to give their musical 
equivalents. It would take all the resources of an 
orchestra to do it. Each movement is opened by the 

43 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

theme, which is invariably a sentence pregnant with 
wisdom — some phase of life's problem whose discus- 
sion will arouse and help. Sometimes it is a ring- 
ing affirmation, such as "I'm so glad I was born"; 
or again it takes the form of a question like the 
following, which itches at your ears for an answer: 
"What are you trying to get out of life?" This ex- 
tract from I'm so Glad I was Born demonstrates 
clearly the musical rhythm of which I speak : 

I'm so glad I was born. It seemed so right for me to 
come. And some day it will seem just right for me to go. 
Maybe not just yet but some time. I don't know whether 
it matters much which side of mystery God feeds me on. I 
am fed. Here or there, nowhere or anywhere, I am joyous, 
a part of things, not to be skipped — an atom but for which 
the stars would not hold together. That's enough for any sane 
man to know about himself. Yet that's not all I know about 
myself. I know God made no mistake making me. Or making 
you, either. Saint or scoundrel, making anybody. I can see 
other things put aside for my entrance. The Lord said : 
Give him a show. So I was piloted to this earthstar. 

So much for the form of his art. And right here 
many of its reviewers and commentators stop short. 
They have been so shocked, so repelled, so puzzled, 
by this utter disregard of time-honored usage that 
they rarely get at what Traubel has to say. His way 
of saying it is all that they can attend to. If they 
waited long enough to really read and understand 
him perhaps they would join his appreciators in wel- 
coming a message startling in its significance and 
fervor. 

44 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

His style has its normal reasons for being. He 
may not acquiesce in inherited prejudices of con- 
struction, but he unerringly proceeds according to a 
temperamental law. He is self-consistent as an 
artist — is peculiarly susceptible, in spite of his aca- 
demic enemies, to fine distinctions of normal 
rhythm and form. His aim in art as in life is to draw 
and keep as close to what is first hand as possible. 
He is an artistic and spiritual democrat — the voice of 
the passions and prejudices and aspirations of man as 
a whole, not men in classes. For this reason he 
vigorously discards "all merely dictionary words," 
as he says, with the result that his text is probably 
more nearly vernacular than that of any writer in 
the English speaking world to-day. It may be asked, 
then, why Traubel, like Whitman, fails to appeal in- 
stantly to the average reader? How does it come 
that if he is really speaking the common tongue, he 
is not understood and recognized? The answer 
seems to be this — that the more universal and sub- 
jective a man's work is, the longer it takes the ob- 
jective individual to come into personal possession 
of it. The poet and artist, when genuinely informed, 
is one with humanity and in advance of it. 

Any review of Traubel's work which failed to 
emphasize his vital connection with the social 
struggle would indeed be inadequate. For in his 
interest in economics and his passionate espousal of 
the great labor cause are to be found the practical 
fruit of his ideality. He embodies the passive as 

45 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

well as the active — rhapsody and soaring contempla- 
tion as well as the solid earth and uncompromising 
deeds. He fits in equally with barricades and 
dreams. 



4$ 



VIII 
As revolutionist 

To some, Traubel makes his strongest appeal 
through the transcendentalism of his work. To 
others, through his passion for social justice. Many- 
readers on the other hand give their greatest ap- 
proval to his remarkable book reviews. In them one 
gets the full force of his social philosophy from a 
different angle. It is direct, concrete, unqualifying 
in its principles and ideals. Traubel is a dreamer, 
a seer, and at the same time a revolutionary who is 
intensely alive on all sides of his being to the reali- 
ties and facts of life. 

Not long ago Maxim Gorky, in speaking of pres- 
ent day literature, wrote the following paragraph: 
"Horace Traubel, Wells, Anatole France and 
Maeterlinck, all these having started with individu- 
alism and quietism, are unanimously coming over 
to Socialism, to the doctrine of activity. They are 
all calling loudly to man to merge himself into man- 
kind." 

Horace Traubel has. planted his flag of brother- 
hood, love and justice in the very thick of the in- 
dustrial fight. The labor movement, that mightiest 

47 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

recognition of the divinity of man the world has ever 
seen, has its interpreters, its recorders, in all branches 
of art. Some of the finest creative genius of the day 
the world over is at work immortalizing this gigan- 
tic struggle in statues of marble and bronze. Great 
democratic songs and paintings owe their existence 
to its vast human inspiration. Traubel is doing 
with his pen what the sculptor is doing with his 
chisel and the painter with his brush. He is helping 
to write the labor scripture of the world. These 
titles, taken from the labor poems in Optimos, 
are in themselves masterpieces of suggestion: The 
People are the Masters of Life — The People, The 
People; Come, O you pinched starved Outcasts; I 
Hear the Laugh of the Unfed Children ; The Bread- 
line trails its Clouded Way into my Sunny Heart; 
Keep to the Road, dear Children ; The Priest has his 
Temple, I have my Store, said the Merchant. A 
German critic makes this interesting comment on 
Whitman and Traubel: "Traubel, who comes of 
German parentage, was Whitman's disciple and 
friend, and in point of form he is strongly dependent 
on him; in matter, however, he goes beyond him. 
The master had social ideas without being a Social- 
ist ; the younger man is the outspoken advocate and 
herald of Communism." 

In Chants Communal, and in the labor section of 
Optimos, we have some of the most magnificent 
poetry which has ever accompanied an historic 
movement of thought. These songs may well be 

48 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

termed scriptural. They are the very heartbeat of 
humanity. Such powerful exhortations, such fiercely 
tender pleadings, are in them. They are religious 
in the broadest, deepest sense. Every one of them 
is a call to the higher self in man; is instinct with the 
consciousness of the sacredness of life in its human 
everyday aspects. What hatred for shams, for injus- 
tice — what devotion to freedom, to love — flames in 
these writings. What an insistent cry for the recog- 
nition of the individual, for the most inclusive claims 
of humanism, sounds throughout these impassioned 
lines. Listen to this, taken from the first song in 
Chants Communal: 

Forever first of all is justice. Is love. Not the food you 
eat. Not the clothes you wear. Not the luxuries you enjoy. 
But justice. Everything must stand aside for justice. You 
have a trade and you think your trade comes before justice. 
You are a man of business and you think that business comes 
before justice. Yes before love. You practice a profession. 
Your profession comes before justice. Fatal fallacy. Justice 
stands first. Justice precedes all the witnesses of life. Justice 
is the only final witness to life. You may satisfy every 
other claim. But nothing is done for life until justice is 
satisfied. 

Traubel has published four volumes which illus- 
trate the amazing scope and grasp of his intellect. 
And yet there are three other possible books to be 
made from printed but neglected material, no one 
trespassing on the field of the other — one from his 
brilliant reviews, one from his dramatic criticisms, 
and one from his Collects, those wonderful scrip- 

49 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

tural pieces which voice the intimate dptimism of 
Traubel's forecasts. The short strikingly original 
prose chants comprising Chants Communal, were 
written for The Worker, a New York Socialist 
weekly paper, which went out of existence upon the 
appearance of the daily Call. This volume was trans- 
lated into German in 1907 by Dr. Otto Lessing and 
appeared under the imprint of Piper (Miinchen). It 
is the spiritual expression of the demand for eco- 
nomic freedom. Traubel is a Communist. It may 
be noted that in Chants Communal he never men- 
tions specific Socialism. Although he is a mem- 
ber of the Socialist party and works heartily with 
it, he says laughingly to Socialists : "You are still 
conservative for me, though perfect as far as you 
go." Debs, Jack London, Gorky, Herron, Walling, 
Rose Pastor Stokes, such revolutionaries the world 
over, alive with the awakening spirit, realize his 
genius and grasp the significance of his message. He 
and Debs are great personal friends. In fact, 
Traubel is intimately next most of the men and 
women through whom the propaganda fulfilling the 
anti-profit idealism is to-day getting its direction. 

One of the poems in Optimos is addressed to Debs. 
A well known writer and worker in the party re- 
cently remarked that he considers that Traubel em- 
bodies the psychology of the movement better than 
any writing man living or dead. Peter Burrowes 
said of Chants Communal : "It contains more quot- 
able, more efficiently inspirational lines, than any 

50 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

book I know, not even excepting the Bible." How- 
ever that may be, the fact remains that his work and 
friendship are perennial sources of inspiration to 
the men and women engaged in the fight for eco- 
nomic freedom. 

Optimos and Chants Communal are labor bibles. 
Those who are once initiated into their potent spiri- 
tual atmosphere find them to be a very gospel of 
illumination and reassurance. Traubel has watched 
the Socialist movement grow from a tiny acorn into 
the mighty oak it is to-day. When the history of the 
nineteenth-twentieth century comes to be written, his 
name will be quoted as one of the great futurists, 
while he will still remain a contemporary of genera- 
tions yet unborn. His foreknowledge and forewis- 
dom are equally tremendous and electrifying. He 
has sphered and apprehended the social order of the 
coming civilization. As I have said, his part in the 
social struggle is as a spokesman of those fecunda- 
ting moral and spiritual ideals which underlie the 
revolution. You will not find the technical language 
of Socialism in The Conservator, but you will find 
— and this is especially true of his flashing, flaming 
book reviews, which are rather revelations than 
echoes or resumes; that the modern problems are 
discussed and analyzed by him from a center which 
conjoins economics — a revolutionary program, with 
the farthest extensions, the substantially ultimate 
horizons, of emotional hunger and speculation. 

Alexander Irvine calls Traubel "The psalmist of 

5i 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

democracy." Optimos presents in itself a rare com- 
bination of those temporal and eternal qualities 
which both hasten and delay the arrival of a book. 
It seems to have emerged from far backgrounds 
of experience, and yet to pulsate intensely with the 
life of to-day. It belongs by right to all revolution- 
aries, for it sings the songs and voices the ideals 
of change. 

When it is once realized that these poems are 
scriptural in their presentation of social issues, they 
will almost certainly everywhere be used by fighters 
for freedom as a source of inspiration and guidance. 
For here at our door we have the libertarian spirit of 
our times embodied in songs whose foundations are 
everlasting. A new comprehensive philosophy of 
life is inherent in them. They have proceeded from 
a consciousness other than that of the usual indivi- 
dual. They appear to me to be the confessions of 
a man whose life has been lived in obedience to an 
inner law, relating itself to the outer world in a 
fresh, unique way. You get the very urge and swing 
of life's struggle in a poem such as Keep to the 
Road, Dear Children; or, The People are the 
Masters of Life; or I hear the Laugh of the Unfed 
Children. All these poems came right out of the 
concrete. They are the marching hymns of eman- 
cipating forces. Traubel has many interesting things 
to tell of the origins of the poems. Sometimes he 
can be persuaded to talk intimately about them. He 
says, that they were almost, without exception, 

5 2 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

suggested by actual incidents — that they were born 
directly out of the people. For instance, after stand- 
ing one night watching the long line of hungry 
men wait their turn at Fleischmann's, he wrote: 
"The breadline trails its clouded way into my sunny 
heart." The pathos, the cruelty, the blackness has 
been set down in words of poignant beauty. All 
through the book is felt the passionate love for 
humanity, the unshakable faith in the sure triumph 
of justice, which are the invariable characteristics of 
his work. He loves to go about in the crowd draw- 
ing from them inspiration and cheer. The poem 
which perhaps as much as any conveys the sense of 
oneness with the life of the streets begins as follows : 
I love to go among my dear comrades the people, 
Loafing in streets with my spirit alert and approving, 
Not afraid to admit the bad with the good or losing faith 

when evil brags and blasphemes, 
Giving my whole self for the whole self of the crowd, 
Withholding nothing from the free interchange of the 

hours, 
Liberal with life as the crowd is liberal with life, 
In the sacred stream without question of precedence com- 
mingling . . . 
The mad sea tosses — the sea of my comrades: 
And we call our hellos to each other from the crests of 

waves, 
And the streets teem with the millions of us no better or 

worse, 
And the houses, the silent houses each side, regard us with 

their dumb looks, 
And we give the great city its life or it has no life — 
Yes, give it its justifying meaning or it has no meaning: 

53 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

Lift it all upon our shoulders to mountainous wonder, 
And suffer and die to keep it aloft as a banner signaling 
the farther dreams. 

Then there is that big triumphant chant which he 
calls The People are the Masters of Life. How it 
swells like a mighty shout proclaiming the divine 
rights of man! This lover of children does not 
forget the dreadful part, they, too, play in the labor 
drama. He shows us the fate of these helpless, 
tender bits of humanity under the crushing remorse- 
less system. 

Would you go to the courts of the poor, to pick roses ? 
Nobody but death picks roses in the courts — the roses, the 

children : 
He takes the most beautiful, he spares but few — 
The court is the sentence of the poor. 
And the mothers, O the mothers, who gave the roses to 

the world, 
Who shall speak for them the protest that faints on their 

lips? 
The hearse passes along the fetid alley, the flowers are 

picked with! stern hand and tossed into it, the wheels are 

again started: 
We hear the rumble of the wagon as it turns the corner 

of the street and is gone. 
The toy of the child of the court is death: 
See, the child learns too well the lesson of its heritage: 

the child does not forget: 
In its heart is revolution ! 

Could the spiritual purposes and contentions of 
Socialism have a clearer poetic statement than the 
following : 

54 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

What does it mean to have right of way? 

It means eclipse and sunburst, burial and resurrection, 

It means universal fulfillment, man in his heart as the seed 
in the ground, 

It means to achieve loyalty through rebellion, peace through 
pain, 

It means to sign no single power away, not to accept 
obeisance, 

It means to give tyrants everywhere notice to quit, 

It means to take all titles of nobility from purses and 
rent rolls, 

It means that mouths shall go unfed only when no One has 
food, backs go uncovered to the cold only in the gen- 
eral nakedness. 

These are only a few extracts chosen at random 
from the eighth group in the book. The whole sec- 
tion is significant, and because it is so gloriously ex- 
pressive of that ideal which is the mainspring of the 
labor movement, I feel it to be a scriptural and in- 
spirational asset which Socialists cannot afford to 
overlook. 

A great many critics of Socialism fail utterly to 
realize its essentially religious nature. They do not 
see that the profoundest laws of life are involved in 
its teaching. I think if such people could read 
Optimos understanding^, they would get a new 
vision of this spirit which is flaming in the hearts of 
men. Desire for union, for brotherhood, for the ful- 
fillment of life, is the necessity which has laid hold 
of us and is expressing itself in the fight to make a 
heaven right here on earth as nearly as lies within 
human power. But unfortunately, people who do 

55 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

not recognize the spiritual forces at work in Social- 
ism — who can see God in prayers and creeds but not 
in a movement which demands such coarse material 
things as bread and butter for those who earn them ; 
such people, I fear, are hopelessly out of touch with 
a book like Optimos before they have even opened 
its covers. Whether we take the labor poems, or the 
mystic poems, or those dedicated to woman, or those 
which sing of comradeship and love, we discover that 
the individual has established new terms with God. 
Out of that intimate relationship, that spiritual de- 
mocracy, which sees created and creator as equals 
and brothers, springs a living something that per- 
meates every line of this book. God is moving 
evolving life as spoken of here. We feel God seeking 
and finding utterance in these vital yearning words 
which reveal so many widened avenues of experi- 
ence. 

During the recent great strike in England, The 
Archibishop of Canterbury offered up a prayer 
which was a perfect epitome of the church's help- 
lessness in the presence of the labor question. It 
called on God to promote the spirit of brotherhood, 
but made no plea for justice, for the righting of 
terrible social wrongs. The actual religious leaders 
of the twentieth century are men like Traubel, Debs 
and other prophets of the new social order. It is to 
them that we must look for adequate inspiration, for 
they preach the great modern religion of democracy, 
which takes into account all sides of man's being and 

56 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

recognizes its total right to fulfillment. A book like 
Optimos is surely and truly a bible, for it adds some- 
thing new to our knowledge of life and of the illimit- 
able soul of man. 

It is interesting to observe the impression which 
certain radical thinkers are making upon the in- 
tellectual world — Shaw and Wells, for example — 
and then, after reading Traubel, to wonder how it 
is that a man whose work contains all that they ever 
said and more, much more, is still a stranger to 
his own country, to say nothing of the world at 
large. It seems to me that it is the unusual blend of 
mystic and revolutionist in Traubel which prevents 
him, in contrast to Shaw and such men, from gain- 
ing immediate acceptance. Shaw does the work of 
his time, Traubel that of all time as well. In con- 
nection with this idea, I came to the same conclusion 
recently while reading Ellen Key's remarkable book, 
Love and Marriage. In it she outlines the new 
morality which she feels is to replace the old and 
lower standards as we grow more enlightened and 
civilized. Now, the ideals on which such books as 
Shaw's, Brieux's, Key's, and much of the advanced 
literature of the day, are based, I find already nat- 
urally a part of the consciousness which produced 
Optimos. All its poems seem to have issued from a 
conception of life in which these thoughts are al- 
ready foregone conclusions. It is as if Traubel's 
spirit had long ago made this new revolutionary code 
of action its own, and as if Optimos was its direct 

57 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

illuminating voice. In other words, the dreamer's 
vision, coupled with the revolutionary's spirit, has 
enabled him to travel to the outposts of philosophy 
and science and beyond. He has the cosmic insight 
and communal passion which carry an attack on the 
present order of things out of the clouds into the 
realm of accomplished reality. Besides being a 
revolutionist, he is spiritually inspirational in the 
widest sense of the word. 

The early poems and prose were largely mystic 
in nature, but what may be called the second period 
of his literary growth, came with his increasing in- 
terest in the espousal of the great cause of indus- 
trial freedom. Consequently we find a simpler ver- 
balism, a surer technique, a cumulative power, in 
each succeeding group. The very height and glory 
of his unique genius is reached, first when he sings 
of labor, and second when, in closing his book, he 
utters his unqualifying cosmical reassurances. 



58 



IX 
As prophet 

In everything Traubel writes one quality stands 
out pre-eminently — that rare blending of the real 
and the ideal which so unmistakably distinguishes 
the work of the modern masters. In his poems, his 
Collects, his book pieces, his talks with Whitman, 
you feel the impetus and interplay of a nature cosmic 
in its vision and universal in its sympathies. Traubel 
is one of those who predicate the sacredness of 
human life. His philosophy is orbic, taking in all 
sides of man's being. He has devoted himself to 
the propagation of ideas and ideals making for free- 
dom. This love for the people, this unswerving 
allegiance to principles, has given his social activi- 
ties, extending over a long period of years, a singu- 
lar continuity and significance. The best confirma- 
tion of Traubel has always been in his steadfast re- 
fusal to be bribed out of his course. He has re- 
jected many tempting offers that have come to him 
from time to time from publishers of newspapers 
and magazines, fearing that they would interfere 
with his unqualified tasks. The desire to help set 
free the tides of comradeship and cheer envelops all 

59 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

he says and does, visibly and invisibly. * The human- 
ities are his first care, technique his last. He dares 
to be absolutely himself, independently of schools or 
traditions. His writing is the extraordinary output 
of a consecrated personality whose instincts know no 
pretence or falsehood or shame. 

Few writers so absolutely live and breathe in 
their words. It takes a man of uncommon insight 
to understand the glories of the common man. 
Horace Traubel, having the seer's vision, announces 
with unquestioning faith what, to the ordinary mind, 
seems novel and impossible pathways for the pil- 
grimage of the race. But those mystical leads will 
be found of all lures to be in the end the most vivid- 
ly clarifying and practical. The love and hope 
which he never tires singing of will manifest itself 
in just that elevated unsophisticated spirit which his 
free nature demands and manifests. He does not 
have to depart from the humblest incidents of life 
for his inspiration. You have to remember that 
Traubel does not study the life of the people from 
the outside. He is no slummer — no looker through 
keyholes, no interloping savior. He is one of the 
crowd himself — mixes with the crowd without os- 
tentation and is at once accepted by the crowd as. 
one of the crowd. If you watch him among men, 
it instantly dawns on you that he is at home with 
democracy — that democracy with him is not intellec- 
tual or a pose but the sinew and impulse of his 
daily behavior. All the little happenings of the 

60 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

average, all the inconsequent dreams of the so-called 
mob, are transmuted through his brooding heart and 
soul into vital experience, which reveals the under- 
lying motives of individual conduct. I have gone 
over the poems in Optimos with Traubel. I find 
that in almost every case they have a direct inspira- 
tion. He is not cobwebbed or cloudmade. He is 
born out of immediate experience. 

Of all living writers who are ranked among the 
progressives, the mystics, the revolutionaries, not 
one has surpassed Traubel in the courage of his fore- 
shadowings of the ideal man. Take the sex prob- 
lem. He has issued its boldest, its farthest reach- 
ing, challenge — he has tried to make unmitigatedly 
plain what it implies to be a free responsible man 
or woman. He has elaborately discussed Ellen 
Key, Brieux, David Graham Phillips and others, and 
has gone farther than any of them in construing 
sex — has comprehended their inmost import and 
then cut way below them. 

Traubel is picturesque and dramatic, tender and 
masterful, in his treatment of this or any other 
theme when he lets himself go. His religion makes 
orthodoxy look pale and bloodless. His worship of 
the essential is fervent and consuming. Faith in the 
immanence of God, in the beneficence of the uni- 
verse, permeates every line of his constructive teach- 
ings. Behind all his writing, there exists, then, a 
definite consistent philosophy, of which the unceas- 
ing flow of words is the inspired result. Traubel 

61 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

is a mystic. He is as sure as all that, has been and 
sees as far as all that is to be. His spontaneity and 
vitality come from his ardent self-realization, which 
is so unquestionably profound. Everything he says 
is virile, uncompromising and downright, just like 
the man himself. He puts himself into his work 
without professional reserves. "I have no dignities 
to put on and off like clothes" he says ; "It keeps me 
busy trying to be on the square" ; and he adds : "I 
mean on the square with myself; that's what I 
mean." 

The blood and spirit of a man is always fore- 
most in what he says and does. You are never dis- 
turbed by the suspicion that he is manufacturing 
anything or is playing the game. He aims to have 
his verbalism as simple as its origins, and its origins 
are always the people. An art that is removed from 
the realm of everyday, from first causes, meets with 
his instinctive distrust. 

The two maternity poems in Optimos have called 
forth opinions as far apart as the poles. One critic, 
a distinguished editor, said: "If you want to see 
the logical conclusion of Whitmanism read the 
maternity poems in The Conservator." A brilliant 
young American novelist wrote this to Traubel : "I 
would have You are Going to Have a Baby and Now 
the Baby is Born printed and bound in vellum and 
placed in the hands of every woman that loves a 
man." For those who imagine they have to search 
somewhere outside of men and women for the ideal, 

6z 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

Traubel's work will have no value whatever. But 
for those who are moved by what is ultra modern 
and adventurous, who believe the universe is not 
upside down, this man's utterances will come to 
have scriptural verity. He shocks you with his 
brutal frankness, and at the same moment opens 
your eyes to a viewpoint which is as enlightened as 
it is daring. Traubel's moral world is built up on 
intense individualism which yet is maintained solely 
through the law of the common good. In spite of 
an almost fiercely dynamic personality, so different 
from all others, and so dazzling often, he is not set 
apart by it from the simple come and go of the 
crowd. He is at once the atomic self-centered man 
and the drop lost in the ocean. He sees everything 
in communal perspectives. It remains for the future 
to put the sign and seal of final authenticity on his 
life. But some of us who have been privileged to 
come close to the man's product, and his unpublished 
career, are ready with a verdict to-day. He seems 
to us an intellectual and spiritual giant — a man who 
is bound to come to his own when the thoughts and 
ideals for which he stands are more widely heralded 
and understood. In revolutionary America, Ger- 
many and England, Traubel's is a familiar name. 
He is quoted everywhere. Here in America he is 
in constant personal association with the eminent 
protagonists of revolt. 

It was of course to have been expected that he 
would meet with no instant hospitality at the hands 

63 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

of formal or academic criticism. But a knowledge 
of the response which his writings, especially his 
poems, call forth from men and women known and 
unknown in every quarter of the globe, is curious- 
ly convincing — at first may seem unbelievable. He 
speaks straight to you and me as a comrade to a 
comrade, and literally thousands of gratefully appre- 
ciative letters addressed to him by his known and 
unknown friends bring him a recognition which he 
prizes more highly than the applause of the schools. 

Traubel's paper and his books have imposed a 
sort of priestly function upon him. He is an insati- 
able correspondent. He writes every letter with his 
own hand. He is a great buoyer up of those in 
trouble — is indefatigable in his resolute optimism. 
Hundreds of people could tell how, in times of doubt 
and distress, all of a sudden, they would commence 
to receive daily notes from him which would con- 
tinue until they were out of danger again. He is as 
a man, as well as in his written word, a steadier and 
curer of souls. 

The Conservator was started in Whitman's life- 
time. One of its purposes was to enlighten the 
world as to the philosophy, for which Whitman 
stood. But George D. Herron has said something 
in this connection, upon which too much emphasis 
cannot be placed. "A whole new world has been 
born since Whitman's days and Traubel is of this 
new world. Whitman himself would be the first to 
recognize this. Traubel walks in the light of a 

64 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

social vision which had not broken upon man even 
when Whitman went out into the larger quest. Be- 
sides, it is given unto few, as the generations come 
and go, to consistently and with such a divine stub- 
bornness follow a vision from year to year, as Trau- 
bel has followed it, and to give to it such mastery 
and music and permanence of expression." It is 
always to be understood that Traubel's individuality 
is quite as remarkable as that of the men who pre- 
ceded him in the historic line. Emerson, Hugo, 
Tolstoy, Whitman — none of them were more surely 
based on their own feet. Yet Traubel himself has 
always said to me: "Say what you please about all 
that, but always say also that I have emerged from 
the crowd and go back to it — that but for the crowd 
my individuality would have no meaning." 

Traubel's enemies have harped upon his relations 
with Whitman until it might be supposed that he 
was a mere reflector of Whitman ideas. As a matter 
of fact, he is quite as sharply himself as Whitman 
was. He has touched life on even more sides. He 
has worked in trades and professions and come up 
against even the formal culture of the age in more 
than one way. For instance, he not only writes 
but works with his hands. He has for years made 
up the forms of The Conservator and often sets the 
type of entire issues. He is an active practical spirit 
in social agitation. He makes speeches to little revo- 
lutionary groups. And yet, as I have said before, 
though a partisan hot for rebellion, he is also a 

65 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

philosopher, serenely confident of the .cosmic good 
will. He sees the black in life, but does not believe 
that life is black or that its issue can possibly be 
disaster. Let me repeat that his Steinert Hall re- 
tort in effect expressed or described his personal 
evolution, though he may have had no idea 
of it himself. An American writer spoke of his 
poem to Fritz Scheel as "perhaps the finest elegy in 
the English language." I have had access to some 
of Traubel's personal papers and find such eco- 
miums quite more common than even I suspected. 
If his correspondence could be quoted, people who 
to-day discredit him would be astonished at what 
has gone on underground concerning him through 
the long period of his comparative obscuration. 

For twenty-three years now, in his office in Phila- 
delphia, Horace Traubel has been editing his re- 
markable paper The Conservator. The expressed 
opinion of many advanced thinkers is that there is 
no other paper in America which stands on so high 
a plane and is such an inspiration. Edmund Clar- 
ence Stedman said: "The time will come when 
files of The Conservator will be fought for and be 
as precious as the files of The Dial and The Germ." 
In it each month appear a Collect and a poem from 
his pen, as well as book reviews and occasional 
dramatic criticisms. What is the ideal underlying 
all his work? What is the message he delivers? 
He is a great mystic; a man possessed of a vision — 
a vision of the unity of all life and of the divine 

66 



HORACE TRAUBEL 

reality of our relationship with each other. A 
Canadian writer has recently called him "one of the 
greatest preachers of the age." It is the profoundly 
mystical element in his work which has caused 
Frank Putman to see in him "America's supreme 
symbolist." His life is devoted to the realization of 
that great dream shared by all men of faith and 
vision. Perhaps it has been given to him to see 
more clearly than most the coming of the brother- 
hood of man. Perhaps that is why he goes his way 
singing of it with joy, whether the world listens 
or not, for he knows that the reign of love is in- 
evitable, and he speaks for the inarticulate. In the 
following verse from Optimos the poet shows that 
a free society can only be composed of free indivi- 
duals, who in being true to themselves are true to 
society : 

Have you been faithful dear brother? 

I do not ask whether you have been faithful to the laws, 

I do not ask whether you have been faithful to constitu- 
tions or creeds, 

I do not ask whether you have been faithful to the line 
of life marked out for you by any other, 

I ask whether you have been faithful to yourself, 

I ask whether you have been faithful to that self your 
self which gives its faith to man in the largest service. 

I do not call any roll for you my brother, 

I expect you to call the roll for yourself. 

The best questions and answers of the soul are always to 
itself. 



6 7 



BY HORACE TRAUBEL 

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